


much and vainly

by pseudocitrus



Series: Intense & Undying [1]
Category: Hades (Video Game 2018)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Light Bondage, Light Sadism, Mild Gore, Post-Break Up, it's about how they kill each other over and over
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-03
Updated: 2020-10-03
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:21:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26793550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pseudocitrus/pseuds/pseudocitrus
Summary: Zagreus was lazy and pushy and unpunished, and it always itched at her. As a Fury her compulsion was to reduce him to quivering obedience, but he was the Prince, to whom she could not seriously raise her whip without betraying the House. So, when she gets the official order to strike Zagreus back down into the very pit of the Underworld, she relishes it a little too much.(Megaera, and the duty of putting him down.)
Relationships: Megaera/Zagreus (Hades Video Game)
Series: Intense & Undying [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1969027
Comments: 30
Kudos: 209





	much and vainly

**Author's Note:**

> hello to my other fave zag ship! this fic brought to you by how interesting i found the idea of zagreus being a “god of blood,” please enjoy my ridiculous headcanoning of these boss battles :')

She has an instinct for sensing people up to no good — and that, most likely, is the only reason she is aware of Zagreus at all, a Prince who might otherwise be too far above her station to invite too much direct acknowledgment. Zagreus slept over his responsibilities, when he had them, and he argued relentlessly with Hades, always in places where their voices echoed loudest. Always he is nudging boundaries, pushing them, breaking them.

Her work is retribution: a responsibility as endless as her own life. And among the shades Megaera’s sisters leave to her practiced hand are the ones she relishes repaying particularly: the jealous ones, the ones that yearn greedily beyond their sufficient possessions, who trade the wellness of others for their own satisfaction. There are some who, by a cruel twist of the Fates, suffer for their transgressions for the rest of their undying existence.

But Zagreus was lazy and pushy and unpunished, and it always itched at her. As a Fury her compulsion was to reduce him to quivering obedience, but he was the Prince, to whom she could not seriously raise her whip without betraying the House. So, when she gets the official order to strike Zagreus back down into the very pit of the Underworld, she relishes it a little too much.

Any shade would take this beating to heart and take great pains to avoid being within glance of her again — but Zagreus corners her in the lounge, smiling, hale. Megaera looks at him just long enough to confirm the Styx has washed him clean of welts and scorching. A block of unmarred marble, again.

“I’ll get you next time, Meg.”

And as dumb as a rock.

Her voice, when she responds, is lower than usual.

“No. You won’t.”

:::

The first thrashing isn’t enough to deter him. Neither is the second, the third, or the fourth.

_This is my fault_ , she thinks. She is in her chambers, with the Nectar perched on her table, still warm from Zagreus’s hand, and unopened. She doesn’t want to drink it, but it is glowing brightly enough that it is upsetting the atmosphere of her other decoration. Something must be done with it. Her eyes narrow.

In privacy, she can admit it to herself.

_I messed up._

In the beginning, when he was new, when his mischievousness compelled her to him, and she let it, as if she were nothing more than a bit of iron pulled to a bit of magnet. His accented tongue, so easily spinning banter and quips with Achilles and Hypnos, tied itself into knots with her, and when he finally managed to shut his gape, his face was awash with a red that fascinated her. This was a phenomenon that overtook him during times of embarrassment, or delight, or general overwhelm, as she very quickly learned the first time they dragged each other into his bed. He was too grabby, too eager, and as a Fury her instinct was to reduce him to quivering obedience, but he was the Prince, to whom she could not seriously raise her whip; so she raised it in other ways, instead. As in her work, her technique was effective.

_“You’re red all over,”_ Megaera murmured, after. Her finger traced the color over the shell of his ear, his bobbing throat, his chest still heaving as he tried to catch his breath. Zagreus gathered just enough of it to respond with an unexpected sheepishness.

_“It’s because of my blood.”_

As red as the churn and fumble of the Styx, as red as a mortal’s little life. She thought about it every time after that, fixated, his blood that bloomed on him when she murmured her beckoning, when he came upon her waiting in his room, when she ground him into his sheets. As their trysts grew in number, the substance that passed for her own blood flurried in her every vein and filled her stomach with wild fluttering when they happened to cross gazes in the lounge.

There was just...something about it. Him. Maybe that was why he was different: his basic structure, his nature, his contrasts. A god with scarlet blood, a prince whose flaws could not be punished, who whispered sweet things and pleaded even more sweetly for a kind of mercy she found herself, for once, struggle to withhold.

_“Wait, wait. Just a little longer.”_ Something she told him, and herself. He trembled delicately. His strained arms were starting to match the color of her whip, which tied him in knots and criss-crosses to the frame of his bed. It began to creak under her attention, so slow that the sound that spilled from him was a whine. It suited her nature to know this kind of torment gave her all of him, that their lives spanned eternities and belonged to their duties but this, _this_ moment, was only theirs.

It suited him too, obviously. One day she unraveled him, un-cocooned his mess of exerted limbs, she spooled up the saliva that followed her withdrawal of her whip handle from his mouth, and he surprised her by lunging, wrapping his arms around her, pressing her back down. There was one instant of their eyes meeting — the ember of his right iris flaring — and then, he kissed her.

Always he was nudging boundaries, pushing them, breaking them. This time he did it with this kiss, which was different, than usual. Tender, and accompanied by his hand combing her rare loose hair, cradling her head toward him.

Megaera’s heart throbbed, hard. She found herself paralyzed. What was this? He paused to search her eyes, suddenly worried.

“ _Meg_?”

After all that, a nickname too. For a moment, she softened. She threshed her fingers in his hair to draw him toward her again, and she sighed into his mouth, and then, with revenge, bit.

Her payment for being caught unawares. She felt the impact in his whole body, and hers, of his shock; and then, his laughter.

Presently, Megaera wipes her mouth. She sets the Nectar down, bereft a single swallow of its contents.

It's not even a fraction as sweet as the taste that flooded her back then, when she kissed him, and felt him shiver as she ran her tongue over the bead of his split lip.

That was the first time she thought it. Not on purpose. It slipped in, a criminal in a world where she was not expected to have anything but her work.

_My Zagreus._

:::

Too many memories. That's the problem with immortality: too much time to gather terrible experiences, and relive them, over and over, a labyrinth that rivals the Underworld itself. Memories fog her as the door at Tartarus's terminus opens. Her time with Zagreus is long over and the thrill that still thorns her chest when he lays eyes on her is infuriating. He still smiles, as if this isn’t duty and futile desperation, but just another tryst.

“You're going home, Zagreus.” She draws the whip taut, with a sound that snaps her out of herself. A whisk of his right hand summons Stygius, spinning, into his palm.

“Oh, I don't know about that.” The blade glints. “I'm feeling strong today. Or lucky, at least.”

“Enough chatter. Come already,” she growls, to which he replies, “So soon, Meg? We always enjoyed drawing things out a little longer, didn't we?”

“This is a fight,” Megaera spits, “not —”

But there's something in the air, diamond-sharp, that lodges itself in her thigh — and there's no time to react except to clap the razor points of her wing toward the blur of his body rushing behind her — and they are at it once more, Stygius and her whip ringing and howling, leaving stripe after stripe.

:::

_This is my fault._

The tenth time, the eleventh, the twelfth. It's her official task to stop him, but he doesn't let up. Shades cower at the mere silhouette of her coiled whip, but Zagreus doesn't hesitate, doesn't slow, doesn't even flinch. She snarls his wrist and his ankle and even his throat, pulls so tight her whip strains, she cracks her wing across his spine and snaps his limbs and stamps him into a boneless puddle sinking between the cobbles.

And he returns, again and again.

_I messed up._

It's too much the same: their low curses, the occasional hard beat of skin on skin, her heart picking up speed as she meets his advances one after the other. Her body knows this too well, knows _his_ too well, and it doesn't understand the rift of betrayal that separates _then_ and _now_ ; all it knows is the rush of having a competent partner, and the rush of _him,_ so nostalgic as to be almost sickening. Sometimes it started like this between them, with pursuit and pinning, a staggered breath, a drag of nail. There are instants they are so close she can smell his hair, can feel his heat, can see the flush of his blood across his face that she once kissed just to feel the warmth of and which she now holds just to pummel relentlessly. Through it all the ember of his right eye flares, with something that never becomes rage, or even irritation.

_This is my fault._

For conditioning him to her own whip and sharp words and even sharper assaults. For filing the teeth of her own bite. For how even now a line of red blood thrills her, and perhaps has some effect on him too that is not exactly the norm. Some effect that makes it so that he can scale the maze of Tartarus over and over and meet her in high humor, without so much as a passing glance at his various wounds, which number less and less each time he faces her.

Presently, she can't spot even a single mark on him. She stifles her disbelief with a growl.

“Your luck ends here, Zagreus.”

“Must we fight, Meg?” he asks, plaintively, playfully. “Maybe we can shake things up a little, try something else.”

“Sure,” she says. “Actually, I have a great idea. Let's try you turning around and walking straight back to where you came from.”

He grimaces. “You know, I was thinking something more along the line of fuzzy shackles.”

“So your new idea of fun is getting pummeled by a Wretch with your hands behind your back,” Megaera murmurs. She snaps the whip. “I can help you with that.”

At first she knew every centimeter of his body and its boring, predictable tendencies; but something is changing. Her magic hisses at empty air, and Zagreus's hot, red blood steams from the stone only in spare, scattered droplets. For the first time, the doubt and worry she held so close and secretly begins to leak, begins to distress her strikes: _I am not going to be able to hold him._ _He is going to escape._ So many times she had run straight through his throbbing heart, and now she chokes as, this time, the cleaving goes in reverse. For a moment, she is astonished; and then, she is wracked with intense, familiar anguish.

_I messed up._

Her duty, but more than that. Her dying mind panics, begins to flail, begins disgorging a blur of memories that starts with a kiss stolen behind the laurels, and ends with a voice, matter-of-fact, casual.

_“I’m leaving, Meg. And I don’t think I’m coming back_.”

“Meg,” Zagreus gasps. Shocked, again, that his actions could actually hurt her. Bastard. The sword wisps away, and he steps toward her, but she snarls at him, wordless, to keep him back. She blinks rapidly, trying to keep her tears at bay. That would be the salt in the wound: crying, _now_ , after having held every single tear that threatened revealing her when Zagreus finally confessed to her what he was planning to do since before the beginning of their farce of a relationship.

“Shut up,” she groans. “Just shut up. Shut up. Shut up, Zagreus.”

She clenches her gashed chest as butterflies spout from between her fingers and cloud her darkening vision. She has enough strength now only for a glare. And three words, with the last of her breath.

“Go, then!” she hisses. “ _Leave!”_

Then her heart spills, into the earth.

:::

He is back a moment later. She looks away, and maintains her stoicism even when the stink of soot and ash gets closer.

“Meg.”

She examines her whip. “I’m not interested in your contraband.”

Always he is nudging boundaries, pushing them, breaking them.

“…alright,” he says. “Later, then.”

Megaera’s mouth thins as he exits, and her new body, still stiff with reconstitution, seems to resent the motion. It’s been a long time since she last died. She retreats to her chambers, where she can set her body down, with a sigh.

Her work is retribution: a responsibility as endless as her own life. And among the shades Megaera’s sisters leave to her practiced hand are the ones she relishes repaying particularly: the jealous ones, the ones that yearn greedily beyond their sufficient possessions, who trade the wellness of others for their own satisfaction. There are some who, by a cruel twist of the Fates, suffer for their transgressions for the rest of their undying existence.

Zagreus isn’t lazy anymore, really; fighting through the Underworld takes persistence if nothing else. Nor is he really pushy, now. But still she itches.

_“I’m leaving, Meg. And I don’t think I’m coming back_.” An instant of their eyes meeting, with the emerald of his left eye shining in the way she imagines sunlight might.

At the time, she bit back her words, so harshly she could hear her teeth grind. _You’re leaving me? For good? Just like that?_

_You can’t._

_You’re mine!_

:::

Too many memories. That's the problem with immortality: too much time to gather terrible mistakes, and relive them, over and over, a labyrinth that rivals the Underworld itself. Memories fog her as the door at Tartarus's terminus opens. Her time with Zagreus is long over and the thrill that still thorns her chest when he lays eyes on her is agonizing. He still smiles, as if this isn’t punishment and futile desperation, but just another tryst.

_This is my fault_ , she thinks. The words are chalk in her mouth.

“You're going home, Zagreus.”

“Enough chatter,” he tells her, brightly. “Come already.”

And he runs her through, again.

**Author's Note:**

> this fic was inspired by reading more about megeara the fury and learning that her thing is to punish jealousy, though in the game it seems a bit more generalized.
> 
> to be honest, i noticed that megeara's death is red-colored, and doesn't particularly involve butterflies like her sisters' deaths....uhhmm but i wanted to play with that imagery anyway so there you go!
> 
> thank you for reading! ♡


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